time,” Laura whispered in the silence that followed Bess’s statement.

Bess jumped up. “Everybody get busy,” she just had time to say, “so that this will be the very nicest party Lakeview Hall has ever seen,” before Nan burst into the room on the conspirators.

CHAPTER IV
DOUBT ON ALL SIDES

“Do you think she suspects?” Amelia asked Laura as the two walked down the corridor of the dormitory after working their way out of the confusion that followed Nan’s breaking in on their secret meeting.

“She’s pretty smart,” Laura answered. “We’ll never be sure but I think that Rhoda saved the day.”

“The poise that girl has!” Amelia admired. “Every once in a while she does something with such grace and tact that you can just feel the generations of good breeding that are in back of her. She always knows what to say and when to say it. She’s a girl in a million and so utterly unaware of it all too,” she added half wistfully.

Tall, thin, angular Amelia had grown somewhat self-conscious about herself in the days since she first came out of Wauhegan to Lakeview Hall. It had done her good, however. She was developing into a less abrupt, more considerate sort of person than she was when, as a newcomer to Lakeview, she had taken part in the Procession of the Sawneys.

“Yes, she is unaware of it, fortunately,” Laura answered. “She would be an awful snob, if she wasn’t. Now, take Nan. I don’t think she could be a snob no matter what happened to her. She’s true blue all the way through.”

“That’s because she has known what it is to be poor,” Amelia replied. “Her family has often had to fight to get along.”

“Not even money would have made a difference,” Laura maintained. “Not to our Nan. Gee, but she’s swell!”

But how “swell” she was, neither of the girls could really know, even as they couldn’t know what a big surprise the surprise party they themselves were planning was going to be. Even as the arch-conspirators talked and planned the days away, a certain lady that was head of a certain school that you have all heard about in the Nan Sherwood books smiled to herself.

“This school is so full of plots,” Dr. Beulah Prescott said to herself one night as she closed her office before retiring, “That I’m afraid it is positively demoralizing.” But as she said it, her grey eyes twinkled and she looked for a moment as though she liked nothing better than plots and plotters. “Now let’s see,” she paused as she put the keys into her purse, “tomorrow I must see Professor Krenner and get in touch with Grace’s parents again. I don’t see how we are going to manage about Walter.”

At the thought, she shook her head. Then she smiled again to herself. “Problems, problems, problems all the while,” she said as if she relished them all.

Alone in her own apartments in the dormitory that night, Dr. Beulah sat down with books and maps and plans and worked away until the small hours of the morning.

“Is there something wrong?” Nan asked the next day as the girls left German class. Bess started guiltily.

“What do you mean, ‘wrong’?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know exactly,” Nan replied. “It’s just a feeling I have that there is something in the air. Say, Bess, is Dr. Beulah sick?”

Bess breathed a sigh of relief. “Safe again,” she thought. “Why, not that I know of,” she answered quite truthfully. “What makes you ask?”

“I was up last night, late, sorting out some things that I don’t want to take away with me, because I couldn’t sleep, I was so excited. There was a light across the garden court in Dr. Beulah’s apartment. I wondered about it then, but forgot it this morning until I noticed that Dr. Beulah was not in Chapel. That’s quite unusual.”

“I noticed that, too,” Bess puzzled, “but then so many strange things have been happening lately, that I’ve given up trying to solve them.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Nan teased.

“Well, anyway,” Bess half retracted what she had said, “I’m not as interested as I once was.”

“And why, pray tell?” Nan was curious now.

Bess blushed, but the postman coming down the hall toward the offices relieved her discomfiture and perhaps saved the situation. It was hard for Bess to keep a secret from Nan.

Now they both paused to speak to the genial old man who brought their mail up from the village. “Anything for us?” It was Nan who spoke.

“Sure, and if it isn’t pretty Nan Sherwood this fine mornin’,” the old Irishman paused to look through the mail he was carrying. “And pray, who’d be after writing you in this springtime. Is it poetry you are expecting from some good-looking young gentleman?”

Bess giggled and Nan blushed till even the tips of her ears were pink.

Old Pat went on fingering his way through the mail, “Dr. Prescott, Professor Krenner, Lakeview Hall, Dr. Prescott again. Sure and she’s a fine lady. And another and another for her.” He looked up regretfully at the girls. “There’s none for you today,” he shook his head sadly, for Pat did love a romance. “Sure and you’d better tell him where he is headin’ in,” he shook an admonishing finger at Nan as he started on.

“But Pat,” Nan and Bess stopped him again, “are you sure there’s nothing there for us from Tillbury?” Pat sighed and looked through again.

“So you’ll not give up,” he chuckled. “Well, let’s see. Till—Tillbury,” he almost spelled out as he looked at the postmarks. Nan put out her hand.

“But it’s not for you, girlie. Not today. Nothing for either of you,” he added and walked on, leaving two very crestfallen and somewhat worried girls behind him.

At first neither spoke, and Bess swallowed a hard lump in her throat. Nan put an arm around her shoulder. “Never mind, honey,” she consoled. “We’ll probably hear tomorrow.”

“But there was something there from Tillbury, I saw it.”

“Oh, you probably made a mistake,” Nan said, though she too felt sure that she had seen a Tillbury postmark. “You’re not such an expert at reading upside down. Moreover, those postmarks weren’t stamped very plainly, and it would be easy to misread them.”

“Nan, you might be able to convince yourself that everything is as it should be, but you can’t convince me.” Bess stamped her foot. “Do you know that something has happened and are you keeping it from me?” she half accused Nan.

“Elizabeth Harley, what are you saying?” Nan was genuinely indignant. “Here, I’ve been thinking all week that you were keeping something from me, you’ve been acting so strangely, but I’ve said nothing about it. Now you go and jump on me.”

This brought Bess to her senses as nothing else could have. She laughed and with remarkable control for her, carried the situation off and allayed Nan’s suspicions. “Oh, Nan, have you?” she burst out. “If I’ve been acting more strangely than usual it’s because I have been worried about not hearing from mother. It’s two weeks now, you know.” And she seemed so utterly sincere about it, for she was in part, that as they pushed open the big doors of the class building they were in and walked across the quadrangle to the Hall, Nan believed her entirely.

That night, Bess was alone for a second with Rhoda. “Do you know,” she confided, “I’ll be so glad when this party is over that I’ll be willing to kiss Mrs. Cupp—well, almost,” she qualified, as